More Solipsism on Drones

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall . . . , Contentions, September 26, 2011. "But what comes through most clearly in Finn’s article is that the issues raising concern about military robotics are ethical and legal, not strategic. Unfortunately, the current emphasis on drones – both from enthusiasts and skeptics -- repeats the fallacy that Fred Kagan addressed half a decade ago: the way that the U.S. focus on military transformation in the 1990s tended to convert war into “killing people and blowing things up,” at the expense of defining and achieving political objectives that can be advanced with the use of force."

Cohen is Wrong on Drones

Asking the Wrong Questions About Drones, Contentions, September 23, 2011. "The larger problem is not that using drones undermines the confidence of our allies in uniform. It is that drones vastly reduce our ability to fight a counterinsurgency campaign by protecting local populations and collecting intelligence that allows us to prosecute the war more effectively."

The Convention on Cluster Munitions

The United States Should Not Join the Convention on Cluster Munitions, with Steve Groves, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #2550, April 28, 2011. "The Convention on Cluster Munitions is a misbegotten treaty that neither advances the laws of war nor enhances security. It is an unverifiable, unenforceable, all-or-nothing exercise in moral suasion, not a serious diplomatic instrument. It creates perverse incentives for insurgents to use civilian populations as human shields, undermines effective arms control efforts, inhibits nation-states’ ability to defend themselves, and denigrates the sovereignty of the United States and other democratic states. The U.S. should emphatically reject both the convention and the undemocratic Oslo Process that produced it and should instead continue to negotiate a realistic and enforceable protocol on cluster munitions that balances U.S. military requirements with the humanitarian concerns posed by unexploded ordnance."